


the seas live in us

by dancingwiththewind (highfaenyx)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Immortality, character study of a kind, the one where Elizabeth is immortal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 15:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10596765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfaenyx/pseuds/dancingwiththewind
Summary: Once upon a time a girl lived on an island among the ocean.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This all started from a simple thought: I've always wondered - what if Elizabeth, Will and Jack travelled the seas together, became immortal, and then were torn apart?  
> What would happen to the Pirate King who had lost her friends and saw the age of piracy slowly fading away?

Once upon a time a girl lived on an island among the ocean; she travelled the seas with her friends, the pirates, and went to become the Pirate King. She drank from the Fountain of Youth and gained immortality; and they lived happily ever after - happily forever after if be correct.  
That’s the story people living on these shores tell their children and grandchildren, generation after generation, before the sleep or after the breakfast in the morning, and children listen attentively and role play after - girls and boys as mighty pirates alike. I’m the King, girls shout; let me be Sparrow and the Dutchman, boys answer.They grow up; some go, away from their homeland, away from the ocean and forget the dreams and tales of their childhood; some stay, get married, have kids and grow old, and one day find themselves looking at the seas on their doorstep, wondering if the legends that they lived and played many years ago were true. Well, some legends never lie. It’s not like they tell the truth either.  
The perfect tale of the Pirate King and her friends forever sailing the seas - story cheerful and bright, story where you can kill a villain and leave your hands clean, story where all of your loved ones live, mortal wounds miraculously heal and don't leave scars - can they ever guess how much truth was hidden there?  
***  
Her house (not that she lives there all the time; but one needs a place to stay on the soil) is on the verge of the highest cliff alongside the shore; old and abandoned, the locals think of it, but no one dares to approach. It is the witch’s house, they whisper. My grandfather had seen her twice, they say; when he was five and eighty, the same woman, never aging, wearing strange clothes (Chinese style, some recognize; a pirate’s attire, few deduce), with piercing green eyes and two swords on her belt. Maybe she is a ghost, some say. Maybe just your vivid imagination, laugh others.  
Elizabeth doesn’t mind. It’s not the first time she had been mistaken for a witch. She was used to it; after all, she was called a goddess once. Sometimes she wonders if she really is. Sometimes she is sure she is, and this all is the price she had to pay. For she lived a life, not a legend, and heroes do not defeat their enemies without shedding blood in the real life, and not all those who you love get to survive; and immortality might not be only a gift after all.

***

She spends the cold winters in the house, listening to the winds roaring outside; one to one with herself and the past - their past - living in her head. Elizabeth writes the stories down to the scrolls and books, her fingers stained with ink, silently wishing for the memory to lose its sharpness. But whoever is out there, they certainly do not answer the wishes of the other gods, and Elizabeth is forever left to her immortality, and something that others call happily ever after. Even if it doesn't sound like happily ever after at all.

In the spring Elizabeth gathers her things, puts on her hat, and travels down the shore to a small cave hidden by the sea and its waves; they have discovered this cave together, merely a century ago, but now it seems like an eternity away - and it's no wonder that people call her a ghost now, as she feels like one, just a shadow of her former self. But, she thinks, that is only fair - her life now is also a shadow - of what she once had.  
Oh, she had it all.   
Loyal friends, worthy enemies; and the oceans on the both sides of the world - that she had valued the most, salty wind and the sound of the waves, the countless wonders and treasures it hid. Maybe that's why she got to keep that part, the ocean.  
Be careful what you wish for, Elizabeth thinks. She had wished for a wrong thing, because it seemed right, because she took all the others for granted.  
It’s too late to proclaim this, yet still: the seas' secrets are worthless if there's no one to share them with.

***

Elizabeth cannot give up, give up on them, give up on herself; so she enters the cave, one year after another, boards the Black Pearl which awaits her through the winter (her old, loyal friend, this ship, their true home, hers, Will's and Jack's), sets the course and starts the journey - an immortal captain of the legendary ship, still looking for another captains, no less legendary and spoken of.  
That’s how it goes in the tales, at least: an immortal captain of the legendary ship.  
Not a woman desperately trying to find her friends lost long ago.  
Not a girl picking up the debris of her life before the storm.

She has to remind herself that tales, time to time: when she feels broken and suspects that it may be beyond repair; when she sees someone in the crowd in one of the many cities she arrives to, someone with the black hair and funny accessories, or with a headband, and her breath catches for a moment to be replaced with bitter disappointment. She needs to know that there are happy endings, not here and now, but somewhere, that there is a pure opportunity of things coming to - being - alright.  
Even if it can only happen in her dreams.  
She needs that - the dreams. Hope.  
We all do.

***

Years pass; Elizabeth sails through the centuries just like she sails the seas, sees people live and die for reasons fair and not; witnesses the great wars, great and violent and unjust.   
She joins the army and fights (something she knows exactly how to do): the swords are no longer in a fashion - or convenience, but she yields them anyway, and in Elizabeth’s hands they cut and kill not less effectively than a gun. Better than a gun, actually.  
Her comrades, first terrified of her non-existing desire to pick up a real weapon ready to fire, come to laugh and admire her talent.   
Swordsman, her codename says.   
Go with her, she hears in the hallways of their small headquarters in London, old soldiers passing gossip to new recruits. You can go to the depth of hell with the Swordsman and get out alive, she is lucky like that, and young soldiers look at her as if she were a legend. Or a goddess.  
Well, it is only fair as she is, Elizabeth thinks, but luck has nothing to do with it.  
She asks for the most dangerous missions even the bravest men reject; her superiors sigh and reluctantly agree, no one can do it but the Swordsman, they say.   
She becomes one of the most wanted agents on the continent; her enemies know her, hunt her, hate her. You’re gonna run out of your damned luck one day, they spit to her face, but that only makes the corners of her mouth twitch as she cuts their throats.   
Yes, I’m the Pirate King, and my luck is damned, she hisses to their silent corpses before she flees; that you cannot take from me.

Elizabeth feels needed, feels admired, feels important - but still not alive, and at this point she wonders if she has to let go; to accept that she’ll never ever be alive again - until the day skies fall on the Earth and everything will be consumed by the darkness.

War ends, they win and the officers offer her a job in the intelligence; Elizabeth refuses as she looks at their faces, withering and wrinkled. You will go and I will stay, she thinks, I will stay. 

*** 

She goes back to her usual routine - summers on the Pearl, winters in the house; not for long though. The world becomes more and more complicated, technology takes over; her ship attracts attention she doesn’t want, and she decided to conceal it in the cave and leave it there; it hurts to abandon this ship, the last reminder of the golden age of piracy, of her golden age.   
I’ll be back, she promises. We will all be back one day, she whispers, and the Pearl shrieks in response.  
Elizabeth takes out her swords (oh no, these she won’t toss away, not ever, they are the perfect continuation of her hands), cuts a small shred of wood from her ship’s deck and wears it as a necklace; it’s like my home is always with me, she thinks, and that soothes her pain - at least, a bit.  
That’s how she leaves - and never looks back.

***

Elizabeth would lie to herself if she proclaimed she would have never wanted to work as a spy; she has refused that work once. But that was a long time ago (a decade, maybe, she thinks; or maybe a few), and that were people she knew, people she had grown to respect.  
People who were mostly dead now.  
She could start over - not a woman whose call name was the Swordsman; but somebody new, somebody entirely different; somebody who cared, who opened to the possibility of a bond.  
So Elizabeth becomes a spy again; leads covert operations, deceives, saves lives; and, after decades, when she feels that she’s had enough of all that (for now, at least), she disappears.

But this time - this time she doesn’t feel empty or dead.  
She met so many people during her travels; people she opened to, people she let in. I’d been so blind, she thought. There were others, just like me, but I’ve kept myself shut for so many years, she realized. No, they would never be the substitution for what Elizabeth’s had, but who said she needed one?

They told her their stories, and she listened, eagerly.  
A river god from Japan, and his wife, who had been looking for each other since they first met as children.  
A faerie queen who was once a human; who lived a life as a human, but was loved by a fae king, and one day understood that there was nothing human about her, and followed her lover.  
A woman who once was a queen of a distant country; who yielded her sword and soul to protect her lands, but was cast out, lost everything, yet still believed.  
A girl who saw other planets and other times, and her two-thousand year old husband, with sad eyes and vibrant smiles.

And Elizabeth’s hope transforms into courage to build her own fable, and she knew where to find those who would listen.

***

Centuries after she draw her first breath on those shores, she returns to the Caribbean.  
Her house is long gone, ravished by the forces of nature and human hands alike, so Elizabeth rents a room from a local. The price is unreasonably high, as she hears her landlord chatting with his neighbor how trustful the tourists are, and how foolish - but that only amuses her. It is funny to be considered an outlander, she thinks.  
At least, once in a while.  
She wanders around, breathes the air - and listens to the stories, of course.  
Stories of the Sparrow and the Dutchman, and of the Pirate King who was actually a Queen.  
Some of it is true, some not, and some Elizabeth doesn’t know if it is anymore.

One evening she asks the storyteller - the oldest man in the village, sitting in the corner of the bar, what happened to the pirates of the old; where did they go, to which corners of the earth; or did they die as all men have to?   
«I do not know», he answered. «If they lived long enough, they might be considered gods for what they are, and the ways of gods are thorny and bitter».  
«I tell legends, not verity», he continued. «Maybe they died; maybe separated or were torn apart, maybe are together still. Perhaps you tell me, girl?», he winked at her jokingly, apparently unaware of her true identity.  
Elizabeth laughs, clearly amused; she could have told him of river dragons and fae kings, of planets and time machines, of heroes and queens, of lions and witches - but these are not her tales to tell. She has her own, however, sad and funny, bitter and sweet, lonely and filled with friends; so she speaks, loud and clear.  
It seems that the ocean falls silent, and the bar lights dim as she confesses her story. Story of a Pirate King evermore looking for her brothers; story of a Swordsman in the night, of spies and seas, of death and despair, of hope and love.   
Everybody listens, slightly inattentive at first, but fully immersed a bit later, and when she finishes, the storyteller stands from his bar stool and bows his head to her.  
«It is a great honor», he says finally. «Thank you, Your Majesty».  
Elizabeth is already up too. She squeezes his shoulders and looks into his eyes, and thinks, I should be the one thanking you.   
«Keep telling the stories for me», she says to him. «Your story will become a legend, and maybe one day a legend will come to be true». He simply nods, Elizabeth smiles and closes the bar door behind her.

Elizabeth looks into the sea, deep and blue, shallow and greenish grey, her home, her sanctuary, her salvation.  
I lived a life, she thinks. No, I lived hundreds, we lived hundreds, we live our lives still, together or not, dead or alive; we all.  
Her friends, her enemies, everybody whom she loved and hated; those whose names are engraved into the lines of Elizabeth’s veins - and many those whom she cannot name, cannot remember.  
We all live - whether in the memory, in the heart or in the reality, but it doesn’t matter.

And we stay, she thinks.

We stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Here I completely discard all events from the later movies of the saga.  
> Also it might be a slight crossover - high five to those who will recognize all the characters I briefly mentioned:)
> 
> Kudos and comments are welcome, as always:)


End file.
